I once attended an internal presentation while working for the UK's Ministry of Justice.
A large number of contraband mobile phones had been confiscated, and a team performed some data analysis to see what they'd been used for.
The overwhelming conclusion was that the phones had been primarily used to keen in touch with family.
There's also a whole bunch of research that showed that maintaining ties with the outside world while incarcerated led to reduced rates of reoffending (and the inverse was also true - isolation led to increased rates).
Allowing free phone calls in and out of prisons makes a lot of sense both socially and economically.
I would guess that there are many cases where it reduces the burden on the prisoner's family - a burden that should never be a purpose of incarceration, and which may lead to follow-on social dysfunction.
A lot of what makes sense socially and economically doesn't happen (esp. in the US) when the alternative is a very profitable business, often an oligopoly. E.g. free prison phone calls hurt the >$1B "inmate telephone business."
Prisons themselves can be a profitable business, which (if you own a for-profit prison) provides strong incentive for reducing rehabilitation and increasing recidivism.
Incarcerations should be harsh and life-ending. Look at North Korea, they have way less crime than even Tokyo. In comparions to Chicago look like a mess mafia gangland. When you reward the prisoners with a lot of benefits, you simply tell everyone crime pays. The focus should be on expediting justice and ensuring correct justice to be dispense. Prisoners that committed crimes should be left for them to be in miserable states to discourage them to do crime. Reoffending one can be liquidated. I really dont want my tax going to feed this kind of inhumans.
Even if you're into the pure punishment angle, prolonged isolation is a factory for mental instability. And you're releasing most of these people back into society at some point.
This is an absolutely bizarre take. Even if you’re all for the pure punitive aspect of it, why would you not want to improve society and the economics? Are you Kim Jong Un or something? I’m genuinely confused how any reasonable argument can be made here, regardless on your stance towards the prisoners themselves.
While it may improve the outcome for prisoners wouldn't it be abused by criminals at a large scale? In my country at least phones are smuggled by criminals to continue running their enterprises from behind the bars.
This is the same type of logic used by police to justify civil forfeiture of cash in the USA. Drug dealers carry a lot of cash because they can't use banks, so anybody carrying a lot of cash must be a drug dealer and the cash must be illegal proceeds from drug dealing.
Not only has this logic severely damaged public trust in police, but it's been incrementally extended to seize money and property from many innocent and/or uninvolved people.
I'm not saying it will never happen, but we should not be punishing everyone for the misdeeds of the few. We should not be attributing anything to criminal activity that has not yet been proven to be criminal activity.
Prison should be about aggregate improvement of society while minimizing dehumanization. Sure, a drug kingpin might keep running their empire from within prison. But we might buy safer prisons and improved reintegration with this cost.
According to whatever study the parent comment cites, most of them are used to contact family. Seems the solution to allow free calls from monitored prison phones is a good compromise.
There is no logic that a good thing should be free. In fact it should likely cost prisoners something if it is good for them. Just like breakfast is good for you but it is not free.
“If it’s good for you, it shouldn’t be free” is a very strange hill to die on, even if we weren’t even specifically talking about attempting to rehabilitate criminals.
I know you just threw that in, but there is considerable evidence that breakfast is not good for you (unless perhaps you're out working in the fields), and the modern concept that "breakfast is the most important meal of the day" was invented by ad agencies.
On the topic of meal timing, I recommend anything by Salk Institute researcher Dr. Satchin Panda.
Here (Maine) calls are almost $7.00/hr which is indeed outrageous, however the jobs pay 2-4x better than other prisons i've been in, the food is better, you are given more things like clothes that other prisons would make you pay for. And I am allowed to go to college, and even hold a job developing software.
So although it is absurd, I have been in other prisons where the calls are dirt cheap but they have shit food, they dont give you ANYTHING and there isn't shit for opportunities. I understand that sometimes the profit they make off the calls might be going to things like quality of the food, etc. I know that this is almost never the case, but I do know that it is somewhat the case here.
How I got here is a very interesting related recent (17d) submission, where a tech-savy inmate discusses how lucky they were to pretty much accidentally end up getting sent to a Maine prison, where they were able to get access to the internet & go from what reads to me like a hopeless prison mentality to a hopeful, interested, engaged & active person in the world, even from their confines.
Alas, the greater context here, and seemingly much of why they write, is that Maine seems to be the one a few rare states where they believe there's any hope of reform & rehabilitation. And even to get this context, it seemingly took Covid for them to be granted access to the knowledge & information to unlock & enable their journey & growth, for them to escape a foreboding dark prison fatalism. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38229231
This is unhumble as heck & just my own weird strange warped view, but I personally think there is a resounding screaming loud truth that access to FOSS is a civic virtue that can redeem lives & should be amplified accelerated & supported at all levels. Prisons, schools, & elsewhere: being able to personally entail ourselves into such great projects lifts the soul, gives us worthy efforts to motivate & work towards. FOSS invites us in to participate in the greater non-zero-sum aspects of humanity.
Also, it's not just the published rate. They do things like...
- add credit card surcharges
- bill whole minutes
- no refunds for unused minutes when the service isn't needed.
And, it's not just phones. Similar treatment for email/telegram type services, commissary type items, books, music, etc. Some even deduct from these accounts for medical service visits.
Has it not occurred to you that, if we want people to become productive working members of society, that perhaps allowing them to learn and work from prison might be rehabilitative?
What kind of jobs take in a dev that's in prison? I hear havig any prison record is one of the easiest ways to fail a background check, even if you are otherwise a stellar candidate.
But that is good to hear about college. So much of my state to this day is still on the "hard on crime" narrative even though I'd bet my bottom dollar that over half the prisoners just need a detox session (or need to be released yesterday over weed charges). Some direction and education would help further and reduce recidivism.
I work for a company that develops education software for people in prison, founded by two people who were released after being sentenced to life as juveniles.
Massachusetts has pretty strict laws on criminal records in general but also questions about criminal backgrounds in applications and interviews.
Some cities in MA are prohibit companies they contract with from discriminating against those with criminal backgrounds. And before some smarmypants jumps on my back: there's verbiage about it only applying to those who will not be working sensitive positions. I'm not an expert but I believe it's things like unsupervised handling of money and working with vulnerable populations.
That would be wholesome. Though if word goes out you're earning SW dev wages then you're making yourself a target for extorsion/racketeering from gangs and wardens meaning you'll probably have to pay half your wage so something bad doesn't happen to you.
I've been reading your comments here, and am really interested in hearing more about your story, especially your place of work. Where can I learn more? Your perspective is so interesting.
edit: I see your blog post linked below by someone else. I'll read that!
When I first went to jail (for being poor) it was costing me $1.50/min to call my family.
Six years later, when I was still locked up, my mother was dying of cancer and I could only afford to call her for five minutes a day.
Illinois at least dropped the prices of its prison calls to 1¢/min.
Amazing that this bill includes the county jails. Often jail and prison regulations are totally separate and jails usually get the short end of the stick.
And remember, it is never the prisoners that pay for the calls. It is always the friends and family having to put money onto the phone or commissary accounts. Often a male prisoner has left behind a woman and children and they have lost their primary income, but now they are being burdened with paying for phone calls, hygiene products, clothing and food for their loved one too.
When a judge sets bail bond (which is what you're referring to in your prior comments - yes I read back because I was curious), it is either to ensure the accused returns for trial, or they set it very high to keep them in jail because they are a significant flight-risk.
I suspect you being a UK citizen was a big factor there - but I'm very surprised that your case is taking TEN YEARS and that you've been in jail the majority of that time. How does that happen? Are you appealing a prior case outcome?
You also got 1.5 additional years for violating a court gag order on your own case? Is that right?
I reposted the above Tweet and the judge freaked out about it. The newspaper article is about the fact I was getting arrested every day when I was on house arrest for a short time in 2021/2022 due to the monitoring system being a piece of crap. The judge said I shouldn't be posted under a fake name. My name is Charles and the link is to a newspaper article written about me under my real name.
The other one that was at issue looked almost exactly like this, but wasn't this exact one:
10 years. And the prosecutor called me to court and dropped all the charges a week or so ago.
The bail amount was set simply because I was a UK citizen, despite handing the court my passport, despite owning a house, despite being married to a US citizen.
Illinois just became the first state to abolish cash bail, so this problem will be less frequent now as the bar is higher.
Courts have been routinely ruling lately that cash bail was always constitutionally invalid, which makes sense, because it distinguishes rich from poor.
But I honestly don't see the problem in principle.
If a court issues you a fine and you simply ignore it, that's not a situation society can just ignore. If you are truly unable to pay, that's more complicated, but should not just simply magically resolve you of responsibility.
There has to be other measures to ensure that money is paid or an equivalent cost is beared. Garnishing wages being an obvious first step.
(This is especially true if fines were to scale with income/wealth)
"The Department of Correction :currently charges 12 cents per minute, and most county sheriffs charge 14 cents per minute — forcing cash-strapped prisoners, or their families, to spend $2.40 and $2.80 for a 20-minute call in addition to extra fees for putting money into an account."
Yeah, that's completely unethical and I'm very glad to see it changed. Hopefully other states will follow suit.
> The Department of Correction :currently charges 12 cents per minute, and most county sheriffs charge 14 cents per minute — forcing cash-strapped prisoners, or their families, to spend $2.40 and $2.80 for a 20-minute call in addition to extra fees for putting money into an account
> Counties will be refunded for their calls’ costs through a fund facilitated by the Executive Office of Administration and Finance, according to Tenneriello. Telecommunication contracts with companies like Securus will continue until they expire, and will be renegotiated.
This isn't quite clear; will the state be reimbursing county prisons at the rate of $0.14/min? Because if so this is outrageous, calls do not cost that much to make, and now there's a perverse incentive for municipal entities to encourage calls in order to siphon funds from the state.
The question is why don't they provider the services at cost? It's not like they invest in the phones. They are in the end public phones no? And secured a little bit so they can't be damaged easily, but that's it.
> Because if so this is outrageous, calls do not cost that much to make
About 15 years ago, phone companies (both mobile and landline) essentially switched to being internet providers with phone service on the side, and when that happened, you stopped being charged for individual calls (within the US at least). Before the trend to unlimited phone calls, the typical rate for a phone call was roughly in a $0.10/min region.
In that light, it's less that prisons charge outrageous amounts of money for a phone call and more that they're only people who are providing phone service that's not a side project of internet service.
Mildly relevant - the Telmate Terraform provider for Proxmox [1], which now stopped working with latest Proxmox version due to seemingly being abandoned, was initially mostly developed by an engineer employed by a company of the same name. They've since rebranded [2].
I've used that provider for a while, and only recently started looking into the specifics. The repo is effectively owned by a company profiting off of incarcerated persons in the US. Pretty wild.
Mostly writing this since I've spent the last few days migrating my Terraform setup to a different, supported provider [3].
I remember a few years ago that CenturyLink/Lumen got out of the prison dialing business. Wonder if they knew or were just worried about bad PR in general concerning the various issues around prison dialing.
I would’ve expected American prison calls to be much more expensive, here in Finland local calls from prison cost 3.60 euros per hour. Calls abroad can easily cost 10s of euros per hour, even within EU.
The US has 50 states. And everything like this is can vary by federal, state, county, and muni's. So...
Jail is for naughty people. Prison is for bad people.
Jails are usually run by counties and muni's and hold people before trial and serving sentences for minor crimes. Prisons are run by the feds and states and hold prisoners convicted of serious crimes.
In general, the idea is a jail is where people who are accused of a crime stay while they are awaiting trial if the nature of their potential crime warrants it, a prison is where people who have been convicted of their crime serve their sentences after the trial. But it is confusing because jails are often used for short sentences (on the order of a few days or months).
This is not correct. Yes, jail is people waiting for trial and usually convicted people with less than a year sentence. Prison is usually for people with a year or longer sentence. My state has a prison for younger drug offenders and other places for violent convicted criminals.
Good idea. Technically the cost of phone calls is so low that they might as well be free; or at least flat fee. Also, why use phone calls when you can do internet calls? They are typically not metered per minute at all. I use phone calls only when nothing else will work, i.e. very rarely. Mostly I'll use whatsapp, skype, meets, zoom, etc., depending on who I'm talking to. Most of these are completely free.
As a courtesy to relatives, who by virtue of not being locked should be presumed innocent, providing some more convenient ways to check up on their loved ones might be a nice touch. You could time box it, restrict it to certain hours, etc. But there's no need for extorting people over this.
Since the US tends to run a lot of its prisons as businesses, it's not surprising that the contractors involved are ripping off their customer (the state).
John Oliver recently did a nice episode on the abysmal state of healthcare in prisons vs. the insane profits that contractors are making. I imagine this is the same for this kind of stuff. Expensive, inefficient, stupid at many levels, and enriching some really dodgy companies and people in the process.
I once attended an internal presentation while working for the UK's Ministry of Justice.
A large number of contraband mobile phones had been confiscated, and a team performed some data analysis to see what they'd been used for.
The overwhelming conclusion was that the phones had been primarily used to keen in touch with family.
There's also a whole bunch of research that showed that maintaining ties with the outside world while incarcerated led to reduced rates of reoffending (and the inverse was also true - isolation led to increased rates).
Allowing free phone calls in and out of prisons makes a lot of sense both socially and economically.
I would guess that there are many cases where it reduces the burden on the prisoner's family - a burden that should never be a purpose of incarceration, and which may lead to follow-on social dysfunction.
> reduced rates of reoffending
Sounds like something bad for business when you run for-profit prisons.
A lot of what makes sense socially and economically doesn't happen (esp. in the US) when the alternative is a very profitable business, often an oligopoly. E.g. free prison phone calls hurt the >$1B "inmate telephone business."
Prisons themselves can be a profitable business, which (if you own a for-profit prison) provides strong incentive for reducing rehabilitation and increasing recidivism.
Incarcerations should be harsh and life-ending. Look at North Korea, they have way less crime than even Tokyo. In comparions to Chicago look like a mess mafia gangland. When you reward the prisoners with a lot of benefits, you simply tell everyone crime pays. The focus should be on expediting justice and ensuring correct justice to be dispense. Prisoners that committed crimes should be left for them to be in miserable states to discourage them to do crime. Reoffending one can be liquidated. I really dont want my tax going to feed this kind of inhumans.
But the purpose of the prison system isn't to improve society and economics.
For a well-functioning prison system it is.
3 replies →
Even if you're into the pure punishment angle, prolonged isolation is a factory for mental instability. And you're releasing most of these people back into society at some point.
This is an absolutely bizarre take. Even if you’re all for the pure punitive aspect of it, why would you not want to improve society and the economics? Are you Kim Jong Un or something? I’m genuinely confused how any reasonable argument can be made here, regardless on your stance towards the prisoners themselves.
10 replies →
Ah, you're thinking of the American prison system. We were talking more about a prison system that is functional and beneficial.
Easy mistake to make, I know.
That’s precisely what it’s for.
Make take a reflecting break.
While it may improve the outcome for prisoners wouldn't it be abused by criminals at a large scale? In my country at least phones are smuggled by criminals to continue running their enterprises from behind the bars.
This is the same type of logic used by police to justify civil forfeiture of cash in the USA. Drug dealers carry a lot of cash because they can't use banks, so anybody carrying a lot of cash must be a drug dealer and the cash must be illegal proceeds from drug dealing.
Not only has this logic severely damaged public trust in police, but it's been incrementally extended to seize money and property from many innocent and/or uninvolved people.
I'm not saying it will never happen, but we should not be punishing everyone for the misdeeds of the few. We should not be attributing anything to criminal activity that has not yet been proven to be criminal activity.
Prison should be about aggregate improvement of society while minimizing dehumanization. Sure, a drug kingpin might keep running their empire from within prison. But we might buy safer prisons and improved reintegration with this cost.
Most inmates probably don't have a criminal enterprise they can run.
Those are the odd cases, yes, maybe you should be able to make exceptions.
But the vast majority of inmates are not kingpins.
According to whatever study the parent comment cites, most of them are used to contact family. Seems the solution to allow free calls from monitored prison phones is a good compromise.
Seems great to allow it through monitored devices for free, you might gather more evidence this way and convict others.
That is do everything possible to prevent smuggled non monitored devices so that the only communication is through sanctioned monitored devices.
Obviously the right to privacy (4th amendment) is lost in prison among other rights so there shouldn't be any issue with the surveillance.
2 replies →
There is no logic that a good thing should be free. In fact it should likely cost prisoners something if it is good for them. Just like breakfast is good for you but it is not free.
“If it’s good for you, it shouldn’t be free” is a very strange hill to die on, even if we weren’t even specifically talking about attempting to rehabilitate criminals.
7 replies →
At the same time, there's no logic that says that a good thing should cost money. A walk in the woods is good for you, should we charge for that?
2 replies →
This is silly. Non-prisoners are paying out the nose for prisoners' "free" stuff already, and worrying about some pennies on top of that is petty.
Offering prisoners free phone access is very likely to save non-prisoners shittons of money, so we should do it.
3 replies →
Breakfast is literally free for prisoners
I know you just threw that in, but there is considerable evidence that breakfast is not good for you (unless perhaps you're out working in the fields), and the modern concept that "breakfast is the most important meal of the day" was invented by ad agencies.
On the topic of meal timing, I recommend anything by Salk Institute researcher Dr. Satchin Panda.
What about clean air
5 replies →
Here (Maine) calls are almost $7.00/hr which is indeed outrageous, however the jobs pay 2-4x better than other prisons i've been in, the food is better, you are given more things like clothes that other prisons would make you pay for. And I am allowed to go to college, and even hold a job developing software.
So although it is absurd, I have been in other prisons where the calls are dirt cheap but they have shit food, they dont give you ANYTHING and there isn't shit for opportunities. I understand that sometimes the profit they make off the calls might be going to things like quality of the food, etc. I know that this is almost never the case, but I do know that it is somewhat the case here.
How I got here is a very interesting related recent (17d) submission, where a tech-savy inmate discusses how lucky they were to pretty much accidentally end up getting sent to a Maine prison, where they were able to get access to the internet & go from what reads to me like a hopeless prison mentality to a hopeful, interested, engaged & active person in the world, even from their confines.
Alas, the greater context here, and seemingly much of why they write, is that Maine seems to be the one a few rare states where they believe there's any hope of reform & rehabilitation. And even to get this context, it seemingly took Covid for them to be granted access to the knowledge & information to unlock & enable their journey & growth, for them to escape a foreboding dark prison fatalism. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38229231
This is unhumble as heck & just my own weird strange warped view, but I personally think there is a resounding screaming loud truth that access to FOSS is a civic virtue that can redeem lives & should be amplified accelerated & supported at all levels. Prisons, schools, & elsewhere: being able to personally entail ourselves into such great projects lifts the soul, gives us worthy efforts to motivate & work towards. FOSS invites us in to participate in the greater non-zero-sum aspects of humanity.
Just hang around all day with no rent learning and coding. Maine prison sounds pretty sweet.
Actually sounds a little like those hackers that live in pod spaces in SF.
5 replies →
Yeah that's actually my blog post lol same guy...
Also, it's not just the published rate. They do things like...
- add credit card surcharges
- bill whole minutes
- no refunds for unused minutes when the service isn't needed.
And, it's not just phones. Similar treatment for email/telegram type services, commissary type items, books, music, etc. Some even deduct from these accounts for medical service visits.
The US incarceration system is a shit show.
Prison is supposed to be rehabilitation, not a self-funding machine.
> Prison is supposed to be rehabilitation
That’s one part. The others are deterrence, incapacitation, retribution and restitution [1].
Letting prisoner’s work aids rehabilitation. Letting them earn further aids restitution.
[1] https://open.lib.umn.edu/criminallaw/chapter/1-5-the-purpose...
11 replies →
Has it not occurred to you that, if we want people to become productive working members of society, that perhaps allowing them to learn and work from prison might be rehabilitative?
3 replies →
It also means you lose alot of freedom and privileges, including unlimited cell phone minutes and leisurely calls with your friends/family.
What kind of jobs take in a dev that's in prison? I hear havig any prison record is one of the easiest ways to fail a background check, even if you are otherwise a stellar candidate.
But that is good to hear about college. So much of my state to this day is still on the "hard on crime" narrative even though I'd bet my bottom dollar that over half the prisoners just need a detox session (or need to be released yesterday over weed charges). Some direction and education would help further and reduce recidivism.
I work for a company that develops education software for people in prison, founded by two people who were released after being sentenced to life as juveniles.
Massachusetts has pretty strict laws on criminal records in general but also questions about criminal backgrounds in applications and interviews.
Some cities in MA are prohibit companies they contract with from discriminating against those with criminal backgrounds. And before some smarmypants jumps on my back: there's verbiage about it only applying to those who will not be working sensitive positions. I'm not an expert but I believe it's things like unsupervised handling of money and working with vulnerable populations.
Imagine working as a remote software dev in prison making more money than the warden.
That would be wholesome. Though if word goes out you're earning SW dev wages then you're making yourself a target for extorsion/racketeering from gangs and wardens meaning you'll probably have to pay half your wage so something bad doesn't happen to you.
5 replies →
I've been reading your comments here, and am really interested in hearing more about your story, especially your place of work. Where can I learn more? Your perspective is so interesting.
edit: I see your blog post linked below by someone else. I'll read that!
How exactly do other prisons compare? Which one have you been to?
When I first went to jail (for being poor) it was costing me $1.50/min to call my family.
Six years later, when I was still locked up, my mother was dying of cancer and I could only afford to call her for five minutes a day.
Illinois at least dropped the prices of its prison calls to 1¢/min.
Amazing that this bill includes the county jails. Often jail and prison regulations are totally separate and jails usually get the short end of the stick.
And remember, it is never the prisoners that pay for the calls. It is always the friends and family having to put money onto the phone or commissary accounts. Often a male prisoner has left behind a woman and children and they have lost their primary income, but now they are being burdened with paying for phone calls, hygiene products, clothing and food for their loved one too.
I'd love to hear the details of your situation.
When a judge sets bail bond (which is what you're referring to in your prior comments - yes I read back because I was curious), it is either to ensure the accused returns for trial, or they set it very high to keep them in jail because they are a significant flight-risk.
I suspect you being a UK citizen was a big factor there - but I'm very surprised that your case is taking TEN YEARS and that you've been in jail the majority of that time. How does that happen? Are you appealing a prior case outcome?
You also got 1.5 additional years for violating a court gag order on your own case? Is that right?
It was only five months for posting on Twitter. I can probably link to the main Tweet at this point:
https://twitter.com/CookCoDefender/status/153495695650234778...
https://nitter.net/CookCoDefender/status/1534956956502347784
I reposted the above Tweet and the judge freaked out about it. The newspaper article is about the fact I was getting arrested every day when I was on house arrest for a short time in 2021/2022 due to the monitoring system being a piece of crap. The judge said I shouldn't be posted under a fake name. My name is Charles and the link is to a newspaper article written about me under my real name.
The other one that was at issue looked almost exactly like this, but wasn't this exact one:
https://twitter.com/OneKingCharles/status/152697261340637593...
https://nitter.net/OneKingCharles/status/1526972613406375936
The judge said I should not be Tweeting about police misconduct.
10 years. And the prosecutor called me to court and dropped all the charges a week or so ago.
The bail amount was set simply because I was a UK citizen, despite handing the court my passport, despite owning a house, despite being married to a US citizen.
Illinois just became the first state to abolish cash bail, so this problem will be less frequent now as the bar is higher.
Courts have been routinely ruling lately that cash bail was always constitutionally invalid, which makes sense, because it distinguishes rich from poor.
In case anyone else wants to "call BS" on this:
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_r...
I'm sure there are examples of abuse.
But I honestly don't see the problem in principle.
If a court issues you a fine and you simply ignore it, that's not a situation society can just ignore. If you are truly unable to pay, that's more complicated, but should not just simply magically resolve you of responsibility.
There has to be other measures to ensure that money is paid or an equivalent cost is beared. Garnishing wages being an obvious first step.
(This is especially true if fines were to scale with income/wealth)
5 replies →
I just read the link you sent. Unfathomable
qingcharles I keep running into you in HN threads, I'm just gonna leave this here:
preston@unlockedlabs.org
hit me up sometime
Do you have a need for volunteers for non-training software development work?
3 replies →
Done :)
[flagged]
[flagged]
As if every story were so simple.
Systems fail people. People make mistakes. I hope you never have to face the same lack of sympathy you're displaying.
2 replies →
"The Department of Correction :currently charges 12 cents per minute, and most county sheriffs charge 14 cents per minute — forcing cash-strapped prisoners, or their families, to spend $2.40 and $2.80 for a 20-minute call in addition to extra fees for putting money into an account."
Yeah, that's completely unethical and I'm very glad to see it changed. Hopefully other states will follow suit.
> The Department of Correction :currently charges 12 cents per minute, and most county sheriffs charge 14 cents per minute — forcing cash-strapped prisoners, or their families, to spend $2.40 and $2.80 for a 20-minute call in addition to extra fees for putting money into an account
> Counties will be refunded for their calls’ costs through a fund facilitated by the Executive Office of Administration and Finance, according to Tenneriello. Telecommunication contracts with companies like Securus will continue until they expire, and will be renegotiated.
This isn't quite clear; will the state be reimbursing county prisons at the rate of $0.14/min? Because if so this is outrageous, calls do not cost that much to make, and now there's a perverse incentive for municipal entities to encourage calls in order to siphon funds from the state.
The devil really is in the details here.
The question is why don't they provider the services at cost? It's not like they invest in the phones. They are in the end public phones no? And secured a little bit so they can't be damaged easily, but that's it.
> Because if so this is outrageous, calls do not cost that much to make
About 15 years ago, phone companies (both mobile and landline) essentially switched to being internet providers with phone service on the side, and when that happened, you stopped being charged for individual calls (within the US at least). Before the trend to unlimited phone calls, the typical rate for a phone call was roughly in a $0.10/min region.
In that light, it's less that prisons charge outrageous amounts of money for a phone call and more that they're only people who are providing phone service that's not a side project of internet service.
Legislation: https://www.ameelio.org/
Mildly relevant - the Telmate Terraform provider for Proxmox [1], which now stopped working with latest Proxmox version due to seemingly being abandoned, was initially mostly developed by an engineer employed by a company of the same name. They've since rebranded [2].
I've used that provider for a while, and only recently started looking into the specifics. The repo is effectively owned by a company profiting off of incarcerated persons in the US. Pretty wild.
Mostly writing this since I've spent the last few days migrating my Terraform setup to a different, supported provider [3].
[1] https://github.com/Telmate/terraform-provider-proxmox
[2] https://www.gettingout.com/
[3] https://github.com/bpg/terraform-provider-proxmox
> On Nov. 1, the most recent data available, there were 12,350 individuals in state and county jails and prisons.
Next small step towards social justice is to start calling them people rather than individuals.
I remember a few years ago that CenturyLink/Lumen got out of the prison dialing business. Wonder if they knew or were just worried about bad PR in general concerning the various issues around prison dialing.
CenturyLink is doing its best to get out of all calling business, as far as I can tell. They want to be doing higher value networking.
> They want to be doing higher value networking
Same as any ISP or telco, and all we want is for them to be a dumb pipe.
I would’ve expected American prison calls to be much more expensive, here in Finland local calls from prison cost 3.60 euros per hour. Calls abroad can easily cost 10s of euros per hour, even within EU.
You can you then get a dialup connection set up and then boom - free internet.
I am not from USA, so what is the difference between prison and jail?
The US has 50 states. And everything like this is can vary by federal, state, county, and muni's. So...
Jail is for naughty people. Prison is for bad people.
Jails are usually run by counties and muni's and hold people before trial and serving sentences for minor crimes. Prisons are run by the feds and states and hold prisoners convicted of serious crimes.
In general, the idea is a jail is where people who are accused of a crime stay while they are awaiting trial if the nature of their potential crime warrants it, a prison is where people who have been convicted of their crime serve their sentences after the trial. But it is confusing because jails are often used for short sentences (on the order of a few days or months).
Technically, a jail is for people not yet convicted, and prison is for the convicted. In practice, a lot of people just use the terms interchangeably.
This is not correct. Yes, jail is people waiting for trial and usually convicted people with less than a year sentence. Prison is usually for people with a year or longer sentence. My state has a prison for younger drug offenders and other places for violent convicted criminals.
Jails are also often used for people who are convicted of lesser crimes, with sentences under a year.
and are housed interchangeably in big cities where most of the population experiences these facilities
I say we imprison anyone opposed to free prison phone calls!
Good idea. Technically the cost of phone calls is so low that they might as well be free; or at least flat fee. Also, why use phone calls when you can do internet calls? They are typically not metered per minute at all. I use phone calls only when nothing else will work, i.e. very rarely. Mostly I'll use whatsapp, skype, meets, zoom, etc., depending on who I'm talking to. Most of these are completely free.
As a courtesy to relatives, who by virtue of not being locked should be presumed innocent, providing some more convenient ways to check up on their loved ones might be a nice touch. You could time box it, restrict it to certain hours, etc. But there's no need for extorting people over this.
Since the US tends to run a lot of its prisons as businesses, it's not surprising that the contractors involved are ripping off their customer (the state).
John Oliver recently did a nice episode on the abysmal state of healthcare in prisons vs. the insane profits that contractors are making. I imagine this is the same for this kind of stuff. Expensive, inefficient, stupid at many levels, and enriching some really dodgy companies and people in the process.
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